Hi, I'm Edward Sree, and welcome to all things Catholic where real faith meets real life. The Gospel stories we encounter every Holy Week are really like the last scenes of a great movie or the last chapters of a great book.

If you don't know the story that came before, you might

not really appreciate all that's going on. You know, for example, let's say you have a

friend that had never read Tolkien's Lord of the Rings or they never watched the movies but let's say they

bought the DVDs and they just wanted to watch the last scene. You know they don't

know anything about Gandalf they don't know anything about who Soren is the Ring of Power Mount Doom

Frodo they don't really know anything they just fast forward to one of the last scenes and

spoiler alert here let's say they see this slimy creepy figure named Gollum jumping up and down

and he's holding this ring and he's saying,

my precious.

And then suddenly he slips and he falls over a cliff

and falls down into this big lava pit and dies and the ring goes down with him.

If you didn't know the story that came before you wouldn't really appreciate

how significant this moment is. This is the salvation of all of Middle Earth.

This is the defeat of the Dark Lord Sauron.

His ring of power has finally been destroyed in Mount Doom. You wouldn't really get that if you

didn't know the story that came before. Well I think that's what sometimes happens to us

when we approach Holy Week. I mean we know of course the

death and resurrection of Jesus climax of all of human history. We get that. But when we

get to the accounts themselves we may not fully appreciate all that's going on I mean we just

did Passion Sunday palm Sunday and I don't know if you had a chance to watch a mass or go to a

mass but maybe even just read the accounts of Palm Sunday.

...